The fastest growing search engine? No its not Bing, its Facebook
When you think ‘search engine’ what brand springs to mind? For almost all of us it’s Google. This is especially so in the UK, where Google powers around 90% of all Internet searches. Some of you may still think ‘Yahoo’. And a few pioneers might think ‘Bing’.
But according to the ComScore monthly search report, its Facebook that is experiencing the fastest growth as a search engine. Search volumes on Facebook grew by a massive 35% in July alone.
Other brands experiencing strong growth in search were Craigslist (8%), eBay and Bing (5%), Flickr and Delicious (4%) and YouTube (1%).
The growth in these brands not normally associated with search queries was very much at the cost of the traditional search engines. Google fell 2%, AskJeeves 4%, and Yahoo and AOL dropped 5% each.
In terms of absolute numbers, the traditional search engines still rule the roost. In July there were 12.9 billion searches on Google; 2.8 billion on Yahoo; and Microsoft sites accumulated 1.3 billion searches.
Google of course is fiercely protecting its users’ ‘eye-time’. They have recognised the huge revenue potential of social networking, by adding lots of sticky and social features to their web properties. The most recent defensive move was their shift to feature ‘real time‘ entries in the search engine results page. But if Facebook search continues to grow at this rate, it might be that Google will have to start to defend its pure search homeland.
And it seems that Facebook has real ambition when it comes to search. Facebook recently bought FriendFeed and also expanded its own services, which has boosted its ability to provide real-time search.
A few weeks ago Facebook unveiled a new search service that allows members to search for status updates, links, photos and videos. Whilst previously users could find entries for other users’ profiles, the new Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) serve them in categories depending on the search query.
Have you tried searching on Facebook? Do you think that Facebook could be a serious rival to Google when it comes to search? Do you think Facebook will be able to monetise their new services? Leave us a comment below.